


Won't You Follow Me Into the Depths of the Night

by sElkieNight60



Series: When You're in Pieces (and Still Falling Apart) [3]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: (FINALLY), Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Depression, Dick Grayson Whump, Dick Grayson-centric, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt Dick Grayson, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:14:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23873743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sElkieNight60/pseuds/sElkieNight60
Summary: Dick Grayson finds the past hard to overcome.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Clark Kent, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd
Series: When You're in Pieces (and Still Falling Apart) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1717669
Comments: 30
Kudos: 437





	Won't You Follow Me Into the Depths of the Night

**Author's Note:**

> More Lil Bean Jason™️ was demanded of me (by myself), plus I wanted to address some lingering Barbara issues (because I love Babs as an antagonist) and I wanted to write my gala square for Batman Bingo.
> 
> TW: Sexual assault. Objectification. Rape recovery. (This is a dark one folks, but I promise you a Good Dad Bruce at the end).

They are all watching him. Dick glides through the ballroom and wears his air of untouchability; prodigal son, returned. Jason sticks close, scowl on his face. High society doesn’t like him and he doesn’t like them. Dick feels like a coward, hiding behind his little brother like this, but Victoria Vale is eyeing him like a starving lioness might a meal.

“I hate this,” Jason mutters under his breath. “I hate galas.”

Dick smiles and waves at a woman across the room and through the mask and set jaw mutters in return, “Me too, but it’s the fastest way to get the message out. It’s all about show, Jay.”

Everyone here is someone Dick is hoping to avoid tonight, but then two people he’d really hoped he would be able to avoid step up. Jason scowls harder.

“Richard!” Jim Gordon smiles, holding out a hand for him to shake. “I must say, I’m more than relieved for your safe return—amnesia, Bruce said! Who could believe you were working at the GCPD this whole time! Without knowing your real identity to boot!”

Dick retracts his hand and uses it for the act; show time. He drags it across the back of his neck, smiling sheepishly. “Yeah,” he chuckles. “Crazy circumstances, huh?”

Barbara’s scowl is by far more frightening than Jason’s, kid should take lessons from her.

“Crazy,” she grits back. If Dick had been anyone else, he might've missed the frown the Commissioner sent her.

“Well, anyway,” Jim goes on, returning his attention to Dick. “It's real good to have you on board, son. You're a fine police officer. I'll keep an eye out for you at work.”

“Thank you, sir,” he smiles in reply, getting a clap on his shoulder for the trouble as the Commissioner strolls past, heading in the direction of the buffet table.

Jason narrows his eyes at Barbara and Dick has to assert himself before the kid decides to try anything.

“I came clean,” he says, holding himself stiffly. “I did what you wanted, Barbara. Ric Grey doesn't exist anymore. Why are you still mad at me?”

With a sigh, but no less rigidity in her posture, she says, “you didn't just lie to them, Dick. You lied to me. I thought you were _dead,_ I mourned you and then you show up again as though nothing has happened at all? At the very least you should have _told_ someone you were alive. Diana, Clark, _me,_ just _someone_.”

Dick knows any excuse won't be good enough. She's right, but it doesn't stop the festering hurt. He doesn't want to think about that time. He doesn't want to remember Bruce telling him to get out and never return. He doesn't want to open up his insides for her, splay them out so she can analyse him and tell him where he went wrong at every turn. He already knows when he tripped and stumbled and fell. Barbara would criticise. She would tell him there had been better ways of coping, like Dick doesn't already know that. The hole in the ground had just felt so big at the time, large enough to gobble him up and swallow him whole. No ledge for purchase. Bruce had cast him off and, through the hurt, he'd forgotten how to function.

“You don't get it, Babs,” he says, shaking his head and shutting his eyes tightly. “You… you wouldn't understand.”

When Dick opens his eyes again, the first thing he sees is Barbara’s arms folding over in front of her chest and her nostrils flaring angrily.

“You know what,” she barks, glaring. “You're right. I _don't_ understand.” Quickly, and in a huff, she storms away into the crowd of bodies dispersed across the room. Jason's small hand on his wrist is the only thing grounding him right now.

“Dick? You alright?” he asks, blinking up worriedly.

Wow, he must look very shaken to put that expression on Jason's face. He tries for a smile, but it's weaker than he would like it to be.

“Yeah, Jay,” he nods, a little jerkily. “I'll be fine.”

The night carries on. Dick passes between groups with a mask on his face and a champagne in one hand. He laughs at the jokes made by older businessmen, woos the socialites; it's an easy game to play―he's done it so many times after all. Maybe he's a little rusty, but that's okay, they all seem to forgive the minor slip-ups.

Jason and he get separated at one point when Bruce steals the younger away. He knows Dick can hold his own against the piranhas. _Except, Dick isn't sure that's true at all._

The feeling that every pair of eyes in the room is on him makes him shudder. Granted, the gala is for _him_ , but too many times he finds himself turning around to see the eyes of a group lingering on his ass or raking over his body like he's a piece of meat.

And then the whispers start. He catches the tail end of sentences and finds himself shuddering involuntarily. The conversations frighten him.

Dick has to disappear into a bathroom before he breaks.

 _Breathe,_ he tells himself. _Just breathe._

The world around him spins; he's not been handling these panic attacks very well.

A knock comes at the door.

“Dick?”

It's not Bruce, he knows that much.

Slowly, from where his back is pressed up against the wood, he turns an unlocks the handle of the door.

Through the tiny crack, Clark Kent―Daily Planet reporter―smiles down at him sadly.

Dick opens wide enough for the man to step inside and then closes the door back up.

Two heavy palms come down onto his shoulders and ground him to reality, stitching him in place. Dick's pretty sure he looks like a wreck because the first thing out of Clark's mouth is, “are you alright?”

There's no point in lying.

Stacy's face―familiar there in its resemblance to Clark's concern―flashes before him, but Dick blinks the image away and presses his lips together tightly, shaking his head.

Clark lowers him onto the toilet-seat lid and knees down next to him.

“I heard everything out there,” he explains sympathetically. “That must have been awful to hear.”

Dick feels kind of numb.

“I should be used to it,” he replies, picking at a cuticle. “I… don't know what's wrong with me.”

That's not true, he knows exactly what's wrong with him.

Clark pats his knee.

“The problem is,” Dick barrels on before the man can come up with another sympathetic platitude. “They're not wrong.”

Clark's dark eyebrows knit together as he frowns deeply. There are questions on his lips, but he doesn't ask them. Superman is treating him like a victim and Dick hates that, but can't quite bring himself to hate Clark _for_ it.

“I'm a _whore_ ,” he whispers, wrapping his arms around his midriff suddenly and tightly. If he doesn't, he'll fall apart.

Impossibly, Clark's frown deepens.

“No, Dick,” he nearly coos, rubbing Dick's arm up and down. “You're not, don't ever say that about yourself. What would Bruce think of you saying such things about yourself, hm?”

“He would say it was the _truth,”_ Dick tries not to sob, feeling thick emotion lodged in his throat. He's ripping along his seams. “Because it _is_. There's no getting around it. I fucked every guy that would give me money for two months and I _enjoyed_ it because―you know what, Clark?―it meant I could finally _feel_ something. There's a hole inside of me and I was so desperate to fill it with something, _anything_ , that I chose to fill it with my own disgust for myself. And the best part is that when I didn't want it anymore, they… he didn't listen. He didn't stop. _He didn't stop!_ ”

The tears pouring down his face drop off his chin in a great flood. Realisation is dawning on Clark's face and Dick is just waiting for the man to remove his hands, to work out that Dick is as dirty as everyone says he is.

Clark's expression turns horrified. Instead of letting go, though, his grip on Dick's biceps only tightens.

“Does Bruce actually know this?” he whispers, sounding appalled. “Did you tell him anything?”

Dick shakes his head.

“How could I?” he replies. “He would hate me.” _He would throw me out again. I don't think I could survive that._

Clark pulls him into a hug.

“No, he wouldn't,” the man says almost as a whisper, right by Dick's ear. “Never. Bruce would never hate you for this.”

Clark stays long after the party is over. Bruce eventually comes looking and finds them holed up in the library, having moved themselves there after Dick's initial breakdown. Dick knows he looks absolutely woeful. An utter mess. He _feels_ like a wreck. Stupid. He's so stupid.

Bruce moves with haste. In that way he does when he thinks someone is injured.

“What happened?” he asks, hurrying over, sitting himself down next to Dick. “What's wrong?”

Dick can't even look at him. The shameful secret is out. Clark waits a beat, maybe thinking Dick will admit it once more. Not a single sound escapes his mouth.

“Dick was…” he begins, lowly. “Dick was assaulted. Sexually.”

It's not the truth. But it is. But it isn't. God, he doesn't know what to think anymore.

Where Bruce's hands have come up to smooth back Dick's hair around the shell of his ear, they still. There's a buzzing in his ears and Dick has to count the little diamond patterns on the rug to stay in the moment. To stay present and focused.

“What?” Bruce whispers, shocked and disbelieving. “No, that's… _when? By who?”_

In his peripheral, Dick can see Clark shaking his head.

“I don't know,” the man says. “While he was… gone, I presume.”

Dick wants to shrivel up into a tiny little ball. Or maybe become a hermit crab. Nice little shell for him to retreat into. And he can feel Bruce's eyes dart from Clark to him back to Clark and then back to him again. Dick _hurts._ Inside and out.

Bruce pulls him against his chest and wraps fiercely protective arms around him, as though he thinks his protection is something Dick can use _now_. The past is the past. What's done is done. This… _stain_ , it's not ever going away.

And when Bruce says his name, the man's voice just… _breaks_. Splitting jagged down the center. Uneven edges and raw pain.

Dick buries his face against Bruce's chest and feels halfway grateful when Clark begins to recount all that Dick previously explained.

Everything is hazy from that point onwards.

Dick knows Jason comes in at some point and asks something in a worried tone of voice that Dick doesn't quite catch. He also knows that the boy goes to fetch Alfred, who returns and presses a cup of hot tea into his hands― _“tea makes everything better Master Richard, you'll see”―_ and Dick sips at it perfunctorily until it's all gone.

Jason curls up next to him on the lounge when Clark disappears and Dick is cocooned, father on one side, brother on the other, Alfred across from him.

When Dick falls asleep, he doesn't know, but he wakes up in his own bed―well, the bed that was his when he actually lived at the manor―with Jason curled up under his arm and Bruce snoring soundly in the big arm chair. All his things are still in this room. Childhood objects that Dick had partly resented when he left and now wishes he could look at without feeling a grave sense of loss, unanchored from the moor.

Zitka, his stuffed elephant, stares down at him from her place on his bookshelf, her gaze accusatory. The sight of her is enough to make his eyes well-up again, but he hasn't the energy to cry, so they roll silently down his cheeks and land on his pillow near the top of Jason's hair. Dick thinks he's done enough crying for himself.

A thumb swipes across his cheek and startles him into noticing that Bruce is now awake. Jaw set, but eyes filled with pain, he looks down at Dick―who can hardly see the shape of the man through the water filling his eyes.

“It's alright,” Bruce murmurs lowly, wiping away each tear as it falls. “It's okay. I'm right here, you're safe, Dickie.”

The tiniest hiccup escapes him and it's enough for Bruce to shift himself onto the bed, trying not to jostle Jason in the process.

The apology comes out on the tail end of a barely audible sob. “I'm sorry, Bruce,” he whispers, salty tears wetting his lips as he tries to muddle out what it is he is apologising for exactly. Honestly, he doesn't know. Maybe everything. “I'm _sorry.”_

“Shh,” Bruce hushes him, a wall of defence falling low enough for Dick to see throbbing agony in the man's eyes, a pain harsh enough that it burns through the wall of indifference that Bruce stands perpetually behind. “Rest now. There's nothing you need to apologise for, chum. _Nothing,_ you hear?”

Dick nods, but still whispers, “it's my fault.”

Bruce's fingertips trace over his cheekbone, smearing the wetness across his face as the man's hand comes up to push back the little bits of hair that have fallen around his ears. Dick's hair still isn't very long, but it's at least a short crop now. Nothing on what it was before, but when he looks in the mirror, Dick can see a faint resemblance to the person he once was. The person who inhabited this body before he did.

Bruce's hiss is harsh, insistent. “It is _not_ your fault. It is never your fault when someone touches you and disregards your boundaries. The minute you said stop that… that _pile of human scum_ should have stopped.”

The feeling of being rubbed raw starts to build in his chest.

“He was paying me, B,” Dick continues, still at a whisper. “I―”

Bruce sounds almost angry when he replies, but it's not an anger born from or directed at Dick.

“That's no excuse and no different from if he _wasn't_ ,” Bruce says. And then his whole face crumples like origami paper. “It… _I_ put you there in the first place. Everything that happened… it was all my fault.”

Dick doesn't know how long Jason has been awake and listening, but a little hand comes up and pats Dick's face.

“You're gonna be okay,” Jason says, like it's a promise. “You've got me and Bruce and Alfie. And I'm not going to let Bruce be a dumb idiot ever again and kick you out because he's being stupid.”

The tiniest smile seeps upwards into Dick's lips, just faintly touching it as he returns, “Thanks, Jay.”

Bruce nods and reaffirms the position of his hand, now cupping the shell of Dick's ear.

“Jason is right,” he agrees. “I promise you're not in this alone, Dick. I was a fool and I know that now. I'm not going to make the same mistake twice. I _love_ you. I love the both of you and I'm never letting anything happen to either of you, not ever again. Come what may, I'm here. I promise.”

And. Maybe. Despite their past. Dick chooses to believe him.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment or kudos if you liked this work! Also, if you want to make a new friend, come chat with me at [Tumblr](https://selkienight60.tumblr.com/).


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